Mentorship programs help newcomers network

BY DEREK SANKEY, THE CALGARY HERALD NOVEMBER 28, 2011

A trained engineer, Beatriz Arias Quero landed a job at TransCanada in August after almost two years of looking.

Photograph by: Stuart Gradon, Calgary Herald

Trained as an industrial engineer in Venezuela, Beatriz Arias Quero immigrated to Canada in 2004 and landed in Montreal to pursue her master's degree while working to gain some Canadian experience.

At the end of 2009, she moved to Calgary for family reasons, but didn't have any experience in the oil and gas industry that dominates the city's economy.

"It was hard because I didn't have a network in Calgary," Arias Quero says.

After all, even within Canada, workplace cultures and industries vary significantly from region to region. So, she applied to jobs online, cold called and networked by taking industry-related professionals out for coffee, but nothing concrete ever came of her one-off meetings.

Frustrated, she also applied to every immigrant resource centre available to her to try to form an ongoing relationship with somebody who could offer local advice to land a job. Then, she heard about a mentoring program through the Calgary Region Immigrant Employment Council.

She enrolled in the council's Mentoring Collaborative program, a four-month initiative that matches up new immigrants with an established, local professional, which started in January.

Midway through the program, both mentor and mentee became frustrated that she was having no luck in finding employment, but both persevered. "I would keep looking online for any (job) postings and if I saw any from TransCanada that I thought I'd be a good fit, I would take them to my mentor . . . and ask if I should apply for this."

In August, she landed a job at TransCanada Corp. as a business analyst. "It really relates to my background," she says. "It's a different industry, but the principles are the same."

During the mentoring program's pilot, the employment council made 37 matches that resulted in 17 mentees finding employment. Since January, it has had 160 mentoring relationships that yielded 67 successful job hunts, a number expected to rise with the program's followup, which includes a three-, six-and one-year checkup.

"What employers are looking for . . . is what your resume needs to look like (and) what is in your advantage to showcase - where you need to upgrade your skills," says Marie-France Varin, the council's director of program development.

Students also have the benefit of guest speakers from industry that provide additional advice, tips and direction about what new Canadians need to do - and where to find the resources - to gain employment in their fields.

Astrid Abramyan also benefited from the mentoring program. The Armenian-born supply chain management professional moved to Calgary from Moscow with her family four years ago with poor English skills, but lots of initiative.

"When I came here, I had 10 years of experience and my educational background, but I realized I had to start from zero," says Abramyan, who quickly enrolled in English courses upon arrival.

She is now working toward her Canadian professional designation as a supply chain management professional - she is graduates in 2012 - but has already found employment in her field as a result of the mentoring program.

What prompted her to enrol was frustration after sending out more than 30 resumes and not getting even a single telephone interview.

After the program, she landed a job through an employment agency at a large, integrated oil and gas company in Calgary. As she hones her English and works toward accreditation, Abramyan is confident she'll be able to demonstrate her abilities to her current employer over the next several months. It's valuable Canadian experience that will surely help her in the future, wherever she ends up in her career.

Employers crossing cultural boundaries

BY DENISE DEVEAU, POSTMEDIA NEWS NOVEMBER 28, 2011

Recruitment specialist for Hatch, Jamie Rogers is photographed in his downtown office in SW Calgary on November 18, 2011.

Photograph by: Adrian Shellard, Postmedia News

Like any business professional on the move, Jamie Rogers likes to network. But for this recruitment specialist at Hatch, a Calgary-based engineering firm, his sphere of influence is a little out of the ordinary.

Rogers is a firm believer that international experience is a terrific advantage in the Canadian workplace. That's why he spends a lot of time working with immigration agencies, colleges and other associations to meet, greet and mentor new Canadians.

His passion for helping immigrants find employment harkens back to the time Rogers spent working abroad after graduating from university.

"That experience gave me real insight into how businesses work out there and the many similarities," he says.

He considers it an important opportunity to find potential talent that might otherwise be over-looked. "There's been a belief that a person needs Canadian experience before they can be hired. But overseas experience is solid. The language and cultural differences are easy to overcome if you have the credentials."

Tapping into this work pool is quickly becoming a business imperative. According to Lynn M. Merrithew, corporation relation liaison for the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, 24,000 new Canadians from 120 countries arrive in Alberta each year.

"That's a large number. And given the trends - older workers retiring, lower birthrates, etc. - we have to depend on immigration to sustain our corporate growth here," Merrithew says.

This is far from being a local phenomenon. Teresa Gonzalez, director, gateway for international professionals at Ryerson University's G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education in Toronto, says "immigrants are expected to account for all of Canada's labour force growth this year.

For that reason, access to this pool of talent has become a pressing issue for employers."

The challenge for many employers lies in knowing where to find the right qualifications and talent for the job.

Rogers says he likes to work with organizations such as CCIS and Bow Valley College, which offer a range of networking, professional development and placement services designed to encourage business leaders to connect with new immigrants.

"These programs are a great tool for anyone in HR staffing," Rogers says.

New Canadians can also help themselves enormously by put-ting themselves in the networking picture and working on building "soft skills" to augment their credentials, Gonzales says.

Balancing social and economic interests with family sponsorships

Written by Jennifer NeesPosted Date: November 28, 2011

Source: Canadian Lawyer

On Nov. 4, the Canadian government announced it was taking immediate action to cut the backlog of parent/grandparent sponsorship applications by suspending any new applications for the program. It vowed to decrease the backlog of 165,000 files by increasing the number of those backlogged applications processed during 2012. In addition, the government will be introducing a new “Parent and Grandparent Super Visa,” which will allow eligible applicants a 10-year visa valid for multiple two-year stays in Canada. This Super Visa will become available on Dec. 1.

The reaction of the immigration bar to this announcement has been mixed. While some counsel applaud the government’s efforts to address the extensive processing times (five years and counting), others are concerned that the unspoken “truth” is that the government no longer places an importance on sponsoring parents and grandparents.

There’s been much discussion about the various benefits and drawbacks of the parental sponsorship program. Among the benefits are the importance of family reunification as a tenet of the Canadian immigration program, the benefits that parents and grandparents provide with respect to familial issues such as childcare, and the liquidated assets that many parents and grandparents bring to Canada when they land as immigrants. The drawback arguments have included the possible increased demand on health-care services from elderly new immigrants and the general lack of contribution to the Canadian workplace as elderly new immigrants may be less likely to enter the Canadian labour market.

The theory is the Super Visa would deal with the positive aspects without incurring any of the negative ones. While information kits are not yet available online, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has indicated that Super Visa applicants will be required to undergo an immigration medical examination; demonstrate they have purchased private Canadian medical insurance; and provide a written commitment of financial support from a child or grandchild in Canada who meets a minimum income threshold. If approved, they will be allowed to remain in Canada for two years at a time without access to health care or the labour market.

While I can appreciate the benefit of having parents or grandparents visit for a long time, and the positive effects this could have for Canadian citizen and permanent resident families, in my mind it falls short.

The Super Visa will allow foreign parents and grandparents to come to Canada, to visit for up to two years at a time and to spend their money, but it will not allow them to make Canada their home, to build a life here with their Canadian citizen/permanent resident children, or the certainty of where they will be if they unfortunately require some sort of long-term care or treatment. It also creates uncertainty for the Canadian citizen/permanent resident offspring who is concerned about long-term care options for a family member, which would be alleviated by having a Canadian permanent resident parent.

It’s a fine balance between the economic and social benefits of having family sponsorship in general. As a society, we want to encourage the best and brightest potential immigrants, but this means offering more than just the possibility of jobs. It also means allowing them to sponsor their family members and to build a complete life in Canada. For many people, this will mean having the ability to sponsor parents or grandparents, and even siblings, who continue to be ineligible under the Canadian family sponsorship class.

It will be interesting to see how these changes affect the program and if the Super Visas decrease the number of overall applicants under this class if/when the suspension is lifted and the class becomes operational again. The Super Visa will likely offer a speedy option for parents and grandparents who are interested only in visiting their Canadian children, and it certainly addresses the issues surrounding access to health care, but it ignores many of the social reasons why people sponsor their parents and grandparents to Canada in the first place.

Ontario’s dwindling appeal to immigrants prompts funding cut from Ottawa

STEVEN CHASE

Ontario is slowly losing its appeal for immigrants as newcomers head to more promising regions to make a life for themselves, a trend prompting Ottawa to reduce the funding it gives Canada’s most populous province to settle arrivals.

The state of affairs has Ontario’s Immigration Minister blaming the Harper government for the problem and warning the that disappearance of the cash will hurt newcomers in his province.

The federal Conservatives say Ontario has no right to demand more money per immigrant than other provinces.

For the third year in a row, Ottawa is chopping the amount of settlement funding it is giving Ontario, which has been plagued by weak economic growth as its manufacturing base struggles to recover from the 2008-2009 recession.

Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced on Friday that Ontario will receive $314.9-million in the next fiscal year, 2012-13. That’s a decline from $346.5-million this year, from $390.4-million in 2010-11 and $390.7-million in 2009-10.

Settlement funding for every other province will rise or remain constant next year.

“We believe it is only fair that settlement allocations across Canada should be based on the share of newcomers that provinces and territories have,” Mr. Kenney said.

Ontario’s share of new Canadian immigrants has declined to 52 per cent in 2010 from 64 per cent in 2005, as more newcomers chose to settle in Western and Atlantic Canada. Federal officials who provided these figures say the trend has continued in 2011.

But Ontario’s Immigration Minister, Charles Sousa, is crying foul over the dwindling dollars, saying Ottawa is short-changing his province.

He points out Ontario remains Canada’s No. 1 destination for immigrants.

Mr. Sousa said the latest funding cut will deny Ontario $31-million and leave the deficit-ridden province short of what it needs to help immigrants during weak economic times.

“It will hit newcomers in Ontario especially hard at a time when the province could most benefit from the valuable contributions they bring,” the provincial minister said.

“These unfair cuts will deny thousands … access to services that will help them find jobs and learn new skills.”

The Ontario minister said Ottawa is to blame for the decline in immigrants, saying the long waits to process applications has become a bottleneck for newcomers trying to settle in his province.

“Thousands of people destined for Ontario are stuck in a huge applications backlog that forces many to wait as much as seven years before they can set foot in our province,” Mr. Sousa said.

“This system is not working.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Kenney rejected Ontario’s accusation.

“An immigrant applying under the federal skilled worker program applying today to go to Toronto would be there in under 12 months,” Candice Malcolm said.

“The fact is a lot more immigrants are choosing to go west.”

Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said he thinks Ontario’s appeal for newcomers will recover as the economic conditions change.

“It will always bounce back,” he said.

But he added that Ontario could do a better job of wooing skilled workers by building a provincial system that actively recruits and selects the immigrants it needs.

“While other provinces have fully embraced their provincial constitutional responsibility of selecting immigrants … Ontario has effectively abdicated its ability to engage in the immigration dossier in a serious way.”

Mr. Kurland said it’s logical for Ottawa to finance and promote immigration outside Central Canada as a means of ensuring that newcomers don’t simply cluster in major centres such as the Greater Toronto Area.

“If you want to send immigrants to our hinterland and retain them there, it makes common sense to shift resources outside Ontario to places where settlement services are sparse,” he said.

“Why pay federally for something that municipalities and provincial services are already doing” in places such as Ontario, Mr. Kurland said.

Canadian paycheques failing to keep pace with cost of living

JEREMY TOROBIN

The buying power of Canadians’ paycheques is eroding, as wage gains fail to keep pace with inflation at a time when domestic spending is key to countering the effects of a deteriorating global economy.

Wages are growing at the slowest rate in nearly two years, new figures from Statistics Canada show, as the most populous provinces grapple with a weak job market that is making it more difficult for workers to demand pay raises. Meanwhile, the spike in global commodity prices that started in the spring is translating into unusually high energy and food costs.

The national figures mask a widening divide between the new have and have-not regions – the resource-rich West, where more and more workers are benefiting from the commodities boom and a scramble by companies to attract skilled labour, and the old manufacturing powerhouse of Central Canada, where entire one-horse towns are dying.

Average weekly earnings in Canada are highest in Alberta, while Saskatchewan has moved up quickly, Statscan numbers showed Thursday. At $906.22, weekly earnings in Saskatchewan in September were higher than in Ontario for the first time, and well above the national average of $872.75.

Nationwide, Ontario is more indicative of the drop in the purchasing power of Canadians.

The national increase in average weekly earnings from a year earlier was just 1.1 per cent, the slowest since November, 2009, and a far cry from the 4.1 per cent pace in April. With inflation close to 3 per cent, real wages fell.

The weekly take of Saskatchewan workers was nearly 7 per cent higher in September from a year earlier. Earnings in Ontario were lower, by 1.3 per cent.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney says inflation will fall to as low as 1 per cent by mid-2012, as the higher food and energy prices that have vexed households since the summer ease.

But consumer spending, which accounts for about half of the economy, is already slowing because so many households are preoccupied with trimming their elevated debt loads.

The booming economy in Saskatchewan, centre of the global potash market and Canada’s No. 2 oil producer, helped Premier Brad Wall cruise to re-election this month and is forcing companies to raise salaries amid fierce competition for workers that is spreading to all sectors. Ontario, meanwhile, is losing ground against jurisdictions all over North America in terms of per capita economic output, and, last month, employment in manufacturing fell to the lowest on record.

Mr. Wall is the first to acknowledge that Saskatchewan has lucked out, as its commodities help underpin rapid growth in emerging markets like China. Still, he also touts his efforts to cut taxes, spend cautiously and provide incentives for investments in the resource sector.

“We’ve always credited a lot of good fortune for what’s happening economically in the province,” he said Thursday. “No government can claim responsibility or credit for this, but our growth agenda has sought to stay out of the way of this kind of development and facilitate it through infrastructure investments, and through competitive taxes.”

Potash and oil are undoubtedly the key drivers, he said, but the services, retail and construction sectors are surging, too. The Premier noted there are currently 10,000 openings on a provincial jobs website, underscoring Saskatchewan’s skilled-labour shortage.

Camile Baillargeon and his wife Carol operate a grain farm and tiny oil-field service company called Camcar Enterprises, about 200 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.

Mr. Baillargeon needs two full-time employees year-round, and peaks at eight employees during harvest. Right now, those positions are vacant.

“It is hard to attract and retain talent,” he said. “The Occupy Wall Street movement doesn’t hold much water out here, because if you want to work, the world is your oyster.”

Ontario, of course, would love to have this problem.

The decline in the factory sector is a key reason why the Canadian economy shed a surprising 54,000 jobs in October – the most since February, 2009, in the depths of the recession – and the jobless rate edged up two notches to 7.3 per cent.

Mr. Baillargeon said he has posted jobs on a Saskatchewan employment site and 50 to 60 per cent of the applicants come from Ontario. Camcar, though, has to compete against oil and gas companies for labour. Large firms like Husky Energy Inc. and Devon Energy Corp., for example, operate in this northwest slice of the province, and their presence means local service outfits have also popped up, pushing the Baillargeons to pay salaries reminiscent of Alberta’s oil-sands boom.

“We’re paying close to oil field wages,” he said. “We have to be competitive.”

With a report from Carrie Tait in Calgary

Immigration Canada